Communications

Pursuant to the Wyoming Public Records Act, I hereby request the following records:

All policies, procedures, memorandums of agreements, other memos, directives, communications, occurrence reports, and any other relevant materials regarding the reporting, negotiations, control, aftermath, and general treatment of hostages taken or individuals restrained in a hostage-like manner by individuals detained or under the supervision of facilities maintained under the jurisdiction of this agency, including juvenile, local, and private facilities, if applicable. If additional policies are maintained by other agencies, direction indicating such would be greatly appreciated.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that fees cannot be waived, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I would request your response within ten (10) business days.

This is an initial response to your records request for policies,procedures, MOUs, memos, directives, etc. regarding the reporting,negotiations, control, aftermath, and general treatment of hostages takenby individuals detained or under the supervision of WDOC facilities.

Our department's main policy related to hostage taking is WDOC Policy &Procedure #3.014, *Crisis Negotiation. *That policy is not available tothe public pursuant to the section of the *Wyoming Public Records Act* thataddresses security information from law enforcement agencies. Nor does ourdepartment offer a redacted version of this policy, because over 75% of thepolicy would be redacted out.

We have three other policies that peripherally address hostage taking: PP1.013, *Incident Reporting*, PP3.204 *Critical Incident Response* *andDebriefing*, and PP 3.208, *Emergency Response Teams. * These policies arenot released to the public in their entirety. We don't know at this timehow much redaction would be necessary. As I mentioned above, we would onlyrelease a redacted policy if the amount of redactions was less than 75%.

Per our *Release of Information* policy, the fee for staff time todetermine what redactions to make and and then create redacted policies is$15 an hour after the first half hour of work, per each staff memberinvolved in the process. The department will not waive this fee. It'sconceivable this project could take three or four hours, if not more.There's really no way of knowing in advance the exact amount of time itwill take. Therefore, before our staff put in the time to make redactedcopies please advise if you have a monetary cap that you're willing to payfor such work to be done.

Finally, in terms of occurrence reports and communications, are you askingfor records documenting actual hostage incidents that have occurred? Ifso, please provide a specific time frame for which you would like thisinformation.